Sometimes
a conversation with one person about one subject will lead to the discovery of
a whole new source of information about a totally different subject. That
happened to me recently.
When
I was looking at starting this blog, I consulted James Tanner, author of Genealogy’s Star, one of the
foremost genealogy blogs. He let me know that he was going to be giving a live
webinar on blogging for the MesaFamilySearch Library
and that I might get some ideas by tuning in.
Following
up on his message, I went on to the Mesa FamilySearch Centre webinar site to find out
more about the presentations and had many more planned or already available to
view from passed presentations. In their list of webcasts, I found two given by
Steve Packer earlier this year on German Ancestors. Since I have a 2nd
great-grandfather who was born in Germany, and about whom we have found very
little, I decided to spend some time watching both webcasts. Steve is a great
speaker, by the way, and very knowledgeable about German research.
Anyway,
in the course of his presentation he gave several examples of how and where to
search for information, particularly on the FamilySearch website. I
confess that, even though I have used the site often over the years, his
particular tricks, and information about the updated library, led me to very
valuable data I might not have seen. I followed his directions and was able to
find several entries in German birth and
marriage records for a friend’s family that I have been researching for several
months. Not everything is there, of course, but enough to confirm some names
and dates we had, and give me a few more names and dates, which I will now be
able to pass along to my friend. It will also allow me to contact the pertinent
archives office in Germany to request specific information and extend the
research even further.
As
a result of watching the videos, I now have many more ideas for searching for
my own ancestor, who arrived in the US from Germany in the early 1800s.
Hopefully I’ll have some equally-good fortune in finding information about him
as I did for my friend’s ancestors.
It
is funny how one unrelated question posed to one person leads to interesting
and valuable information from a previously unknown source!
The
lessons: don’t stop looking for alternate resources; go back to FamilySearch
from time-to-time and see what’s new or what advice they may have added; read
lots about what other genealogists are doing, such as in other blogs; and don’t
be afraid to contact any of those genealogists.
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